Signs are pointing to an economic recovery in the healthcare sector.  PGR’s network of hospital administrators and purchasing executives indicate that capital budget freezes, while not at normal levels, have loosened up a bit.  Evidence of this is best seen, if anywhere, in the allocation of funding for Electronic Medical Record (EMR) platforms, which is a direct result of the stimulus plan that was approved earlier this year.  With Q2 revenue numbers in for players like QSII and MDRX, it looks like hospitals and physician practices are progressing nicely into the information age.

Now that purchases and implementation are underway, what’s next?  Patient records will be electronic, but there is a plethora of data that needs to be integrated into these EMRs, as well.  Imaging data, pacemaker readings, pathology diagnoses, and diagnostics results are just a few of the areas that will need to be seamlessly entered into a patient’s record.  So, manufacturers of these devices and equipment are ramping up to develop the technologies to bring this data online.

It is too early to tell if this will be a game-changing differentiator for certain manufacturers, but they are certainly hoping so, especially in more mature markets.  A good example is in the implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) market, where the three main players have come out with remote monitoring capabilities of these devices, which can sync with a hospital’s EMR platform.  In an effort to minimize medical costs, CMS is encouraging remote monitoring practices by reimbursing for a higher amount, versus monitoring a patient through an office visit.  Each manufacturer has a remote monitoring technology that works with different devices and can speak to an EMR platform with varying ease, but as doctors transition to this practice, this may influence their preference for a given manufacturer.  Regardless, device and equipment manufacturers must stay on top of the technology from the IT perspective to avoid drowning in the wave of EMRs.

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Tags: Healthcare IT; EMR;

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.